American Eden by Victoria Johnson

Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction. A New York Times Editors’ Choice Selection.

Here’s a story we love telling: the one about the man history nearly forgot.

On a clear July morning in 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat headed for a New Jersey dueling ground. He brought just two men with him. One was his second. The other was Dr. David Hosack—the family physician, a brilliant surgeon, and, remarkably, a close friend to Aaron Burr as well.

In this groundbreaking biography, Victoria Johnson pulls Hosack out of the fog of history and sets him where he belongs: right alongside the towering figures of the early Republic. Educated in Europe, inspired by nature, Hosack assembled a plant collection so extraordinary that botanists still marvel at it today. He conducted some of the nation’s first pharmaceutical research. He introduced new surgeries to America. And through it all, he chased one dream above the rest.

He wanted to build the country’s first botanical garden. By 1810, he had—twenty green acres of Manhattan farmland. Today, what remains lies buried beneath Rockefeller Center.

Rich with sensory detail and quiet drama, this is history that reads like a lush, living thing. Whether Hosack is gathering specimens along the Hudson or breaking a young patient’s fever, Johnson makes you feel the pulse of a young nation finding its footing.

A perfect companion for a rainy afternoon in the cove—pour a cup of tea, settle in, and rediscover the visionary who helped shape America.

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